Sunday, October 28, 2012

Living without Power – Impact of Hurricane Sandy on IEC 61850

Hurricane Sandy is about to hit the U.S. east coast. This impacts the travel to and from the east coast. Additionally, early winter weather conditions in Europe delays flights within Europe … so that several WG 10 experts going to Houston (TX) will arrive one day later. That’s a minor issue.

But more crucial: It is likely that Sandy will cause power outages for hours, days or weeks. What does it mean to live without power? According to the www.naturalnews.com it could be summarized as follows:

Most Americans have simply never lived without power for any extended period of time. No power means:

• No internet (OMG!)
• No TV (gasp!)
• No recharging cell phones.
• No hot showers.
• No laundry machines.
• No dishwashers.
• No heating of your home.
• No lights.
• No toasters or ovens.
• No computers.
• No radios unless you have a wind-up radio or spare batteries.

For some period of time as well:
• No police response services
• No fire response
• No ambulances

Having some renewable sources (PV panels, Solar heating, …) on your roof and more distributed power systems (storage, …) would help to survive to some extend!

I wish all people that are hit by power outages all over that it will not be so severe the days to come!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Have to disagree with "No hot showers."

A lot of the world uses gas heating or solar to heat water (yes, it even works in winter).

Bulk storage hot water with electric heating is now banned for new installations in some places in Australia (all of Queensland for example).